"Ain"t I a pickle?" she cried, turning to Philip. "What must you think of me? But I can"t "elp meself."
Those who were going to take part in the social evening came in, the younger members of the staff mostly, boys who had not girls of their own, and girls who had not yet found anyone to walk with. Several of the young gentlemen wore lounge suits with white evening ties and red silk handkerchiefs; they were going to perform, and they had a busy, abstracted air; some were self-confident, but others were nervous, and they watched their public with an anxious eye. Presently a girl with a great deal of hair sat at the piano and ran her hands noisily across the keyboard. When the audience had settled itself she looked round and gave the name of her piece.
"A Drive in Russia."
There was a round of clapping during which she deftly fixed bells to her wrists. She smiled a little and immediately burst into energetic melody.
There was a great deal more clapping when she finished, and when this was over, as an encore, she gave a piece which imitated the sea; there were little trills to represent the lapping waves and thundering chords, with the loud pedal down, to suggest a storm. After this a gentleman sang a song called Bid me Good-bye, and as an encore obliged with Sing me to Sleep. The audience measured their enthusiasm with a nice discrimination.
Everyone was applauded till he gave an encore, and so that there might be no jealousy no one was applauded more than anyone else. Miss Bennett sailed up to Philip.
"I"m sure you play or sing, Mr. Carey," she said archly. "I can see it in your face."
"I"m afraid I don"t."
"Don"t you even recite?"
"I have no parlour tricks."
The buyer in the "gentleman"s hosiery" was a well-known reciter, and he was called upon loudly to perform by all the a.s.sistants in his department.
Needing no pressing, he gave a long poem of tragic character, in which he rolled his eyes, put his hand on his chest, and acted as though he were in great agony. The point, that he had eaten cuc.u.mber for supper, was divulged in the last line and was greeted with laughter, a little forced because everyone knew the poem well, but loud and long. Miss Bennett did not sing, play, or recite.
"Oh no, she "as a little game of her own," said Mrs. Hodges.
"Now, don"t you begin chaffing me. The fact is I know quite a lot about palmistry and second sight."
"Oh, do tell my "and, Miss Bennett," cried the girls in her department, eager to please her.
"I don"t like telling "ands, I don"t really. I"ve told people such terrible things and they"ve all come true, it makes one superst.i.tious like."
"Oh, Miss Bennett, just for once."
A little crowd collected round her, and, amid screams of embarra.s.sment, giggles, blushings, and cries of dismay or admiration, she talked mysteriously of fair and dark men, of money in a letter, and of journeys, till the sweat stood in heavy beads on her painted face.
"Look at me," she said. "I"m all of a perspiration."
Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer, but common decency made them refuse. Miss Bennett was very fond of ginger beer, and she drank two and sometimes three bottles during the evening; but she insisted on paying for them herself. The men liked her for that.
"She"s a rum old bird," they said, "but mind you, she"s not a bad sort, she"s not like what some are."
After supper progressive whist was played. This was very noisy, and there was a great deal of laughing and shouting, as people moved from table to table. Miss Bennett grew hotter and hotter.
"Look at me," she said. "I"m all of a perspiration."
In due course one of the more dashing of the young men remarked that if they wanted to dance they"d better begin. The girl who had played the accompaniments sat at the piano and placed a decided foot on the loud pedal. She played a dreamy waltz, marking the time with the ba.s.s, while with the right hand she "tiddled" in alternate octaves. By way of a change she crossed her hands and played the air in the ba.s.s.
"She does play well, doesn"t she?" Mrs. Hodges remarked to Philip. "And what"s more she"s never "ad a lesson in "er life; it"s all ear."
Miss Bennett liked dancing and poetry better than anything in the world.
She danced well, but very, very slowly, and an expression came into her eyes as though her thoughts were far, far away. She talked breathlessly of the floor and the heat and the supper. She said that the Portman Rooms had the best floor in London and she always liked the dances there; they were very select, and she couldn"t bear dancing with all sorts of men you didn"t know anything about; why, you might be exposing yourself to you didn"t know what all. Nearly all the people danced very well, and they enjoyed themselves. Sweat poured down their faces, and the very high collars of the young men grew limp.
Philip looked on, and a greater depression seized him than he remembered to have felt for a long time. He felt intolerably alone. He did not go, because he was afraid to seem supercilious, and he talked with the girls and laughed, but in his heart was unhappiness. Miss Bennett asked him if he had a girl.
"No," he smiled.
"Oh, well, there"s plenty to choose from here. And they"re very nice respectable girls, some of them. I expect you"ll have a girl before you"ve been here long."
She looked at him very archly.
"Meet "em "alf-way," said Mrs. Hodges. "That"s what I tell him."
It was nearly eleven o"clock, and the party broke up. Philip could not get to sleep. Like the others he kept his aching feet outside the bed-clothes.
He tried with all his might not to think of the life he was leading. The soldier was snoring quietly.
CV
The wages were paid once a month by the secretary. On pay-day each batch of a.s.sistants, coming down from tea, went into the pa.s.sage and joined the long line of people waiting orderly like the audience in a queue outside a gallery door. One by one they entered the office. The secretary sat at a desk with wooden bowls of money in front of him, and he asked the employe"s name; he referred to a book, quickly, after a suspicious glance at the a.s.sistant, said aloud the sum due, and taking money out of the bowl counted it into his hand.
"Thank you," he said. "Next."
"Thank you," was the reply.
The a.s.sistant pa.s.sed on to the second secretary and before leaving the room paid him four shillings for washing money, two shillings for the club, and any fines that he might have incurred. With what he had left he went back into his department and there waited till it was time to go.
Most of the men in Philip"s house were in debt with the woman who sold the sandwiches they generally ate for supper. She was a funny old thing, very fat, with a broad, red face, and black hair plastered neatly on each side of the forehead in the fashion shown in early pictures of Queen Victoria.
She always wore a little black bonnet and a white ap.r.o.n; her sleeves were tucked up to the elbow; she cut the sandwiches with large, dirty, greasy hands; and there was grease on her bodice, grease on her ap.r.o.n, grease on her skirt. She was called Mrs. Fletcher, but everyone addressed her as "Ma"; she was really fond of the shop a.s.sistants, whom she called her boys; she never minded giving credit towards the end of the month, and it was known that now and then she had lent someone or other a few shillings when he was in straits. She was a good woman. When they were leaving or when they came back from the holidays, the boys kissed her fat red cheek; and more than one, dismissed and unable to find another job, had got for nothing food to keep body and soul together. The boys were sensible of her large heart and repaid her with genuine affection. There was a story they liked to tell of a man who had done well for himself at Bradford, and had five shops of his own, and had come back after fifteen years and visited Ma Fletcher and given her a gold watch.
Philip found himself with eighteen shillings left out of his month"s pay.
It was the first money he had ever earned in his life. It gave him none of the pride which might have been expected, but merely a feeling of dismay.
The smallness of the sum emphasised the hopelessness of his position. He took fifteen shillings to Mrs. Athelny to pay back part of what he owed her, but she would not take more than half a sovereign.
"D"you know, at that rate it"ll take me eight months to settle up with you."
"As long as Athelny"s in work I can afford to wait, and who knows, p"raps they"ll give you a rise."
Athelny kept on saying that he would speak to the manager about Philip, it was absurd that no use should be made of his talents; but he did nothing, and Philip soon came to the conclusion that the press-agent was not a person of so much importance in the manager"s eyes as in his own.
Occasionally he saw Athelny in the shop. His flamboyance was extinguished; and in neat, commonplace, shabby clothes he hurried, a subdued, una.s.suming little man, through the departments as though anxious to escape notice.
"When I think of how I"m wasted there," he said at home, "I"m almost tempted to give in my notice. There"s no scope for a man like me. I"m stunted, I"m starved."
Mrs. Athelny, quietly sewing, took no notice of his complaints. Her mouth tightened a little.
"It"s very hard to get jobs in these times. It"s regular and it"s safe; I expect you"ll stay there as long as you give satisfaction."
It was evident that Athelny would. It was interesting to see the ascendency which the uneducated woman, bound to him by no legal tie, had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man. Mrs. Athelny treated Philip with motherly kindness now that he was in a different position, and he was touched by her anxiety that he should make a good meal. It was the solace of his life (and when he grew used to it, the monotony of it was what chiefly appalled him) that he could go every Sunday to that friendly house. It was a joy to sit in the stately Spanish chairs and discuss all manner of things with Athelny. Though his condition seemed so desperate he never left him to go back to Harrington Street without a feeling of exultation. At first Philip, in order not to forget what he had learned, tried to go on reading his medical books, but he found it useless; he could not fix his attention on them after the exhausting work of the day; and it seemed hopeless to continue working when he did not know in how long he would be able to go back to the hospital. He dreamed constantly that he was in the wards. The awakening was painful. The sensation of other people sleeping in the room was inexpressibly irksome to him; he had been used to solitude, and to be with others always, never to be by himself for an instant was at these moments horrible to him. It was then that he found it most difficult to combat his despair. He saw himself going on with that life, first to the right, second on the left, madam, indefinitely; and having to be thankful if he was not sent away: the men who had gone to the war would be coming home soon, the firm had guaranteed to take them back, and this must mean that others would be sacked; he would have to stir himself even to keep the wretched post he had.
There was only one thing to free him and that was the death of his uncle.
He would get a few hundred pounds then, and on this he could finish his course at the hospital. Philip began to wish with all his might for the old man"s death. He reckoned out how long he could possibly live: he was well over seventy, Philip did not know his exact age, but he must be at least seventy-five; he suffered from chronic bronchitis and every winter had a bad cough. Though he knew them by heart Philip read over and over again the details in his text-book of medicine of chronic bronchitis in the old. A severe winter might be too much for the old man. With all his heart Philip longed for cold and rain. He thought of it constantly, so that it became a monomania. Uncle William was affected by the great heat too, and in August they had three weeks of sweltering weather. Philip imagined to himself that one day perhaps a telegram would come saying that the Vicar had died suddenly, and he pictured to himself his unutterable relief. As he stood at the top of the stairs and directed people to the departments they wanted, he occupied his mind with thinking incessantly what he would do with the money. He did not know how much it would be, perhaps no more than five hundred pounds, but even that would be enough.
He would leave the shop at once, he would not bother to give notice, he would pack his box and go without saying a word to anybody; and then he would return to the hospital. That was the first thing. Would he have forgotten much? In six months he could get it all back, and then he would take his three examinations as soon as he could, midwifery first, then medicine and surgery. The awful fear seized him that his uncle, notwithstanding his promises, might leave everything he had to the parish or the church. The thought made Philip sick. He could not be so cruel. But if that happened Philip was quite determined what to do, he would not go on in that way indefinitely; his life was only tolerable because he could look forward to something better. If he had no hope he would have no fear.